Cheshire Calhoun
# Cheshire Calhoun

Cheshire Calhoun is a professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University and research professor at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona. She is best known for her work in feminist philosophy as well as writing on gay and lesbian philosophy and the morality of same-sex marriage.

## Education and career

Calhoun is the second daughter of John B. Calhoun, an ethicist best known for behavioral sink theory.

She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin in 1981, and taught at College of Charleston and Colby College before moving to Arizona State in 2007.

In 2014, she was elected as the board chair of the American Philosophical Association where she has previously served on the executive committee for the APA's Eastern Division as well as the APA's committee for LGBT philosophers.

In 2020, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

## Philosophical work

Calhoun argues for same-sex marriage—and against the United States' Defense of Marriage Act—on the basis that equal access to the institution of marriage for homosexual and heterosexual people is the only way to guarantee equal citizenship and societal worth for lesbian and gay people.

